The Northcote Library Food Garden is a community garden in the heart of Melbourne's inner north. The garden is managed by a group of residents for the benefit of the community. It is a productive growing space, as well as a place for gathering and for demonstrating sustainable gardening practices. Community members are invited to become involved, either as a Gardener or as a Friend of the Garden. Please register your interest by email: northcotelibraryfoodgarden@gmail.com

Monday, 21 October 2013

Celebrate community food gardening with us with great food, music and activities.

Join us for delicious cake and tea.

Enjoy fabulous live gypsy music.

Contribute to community garden art pieces.

Find out more about food and community gardening in Darebin.

Select some seedlings to begin or add to your home food garden.

Learn about growing native plants in your home garden

and the All Nations Food Forest project.

Free Workshop:

Damien Curtain will host a garden talk on Native Plants in the Home Garden at 1.15pm. Find out how native species can contribute to your edible spaces and help create beautiful and bio-diverse garden systems. Find out about the native and indigenous species successfully growing in the Northcote Library Food Garden.

RSVP via email is essential for this workshop: northcotelibraryfoodgarden@gmail.com

In the wonderful September sunshine gardeners and visitors were treated to two fabulous workshops from our garden friends and advisers, Selia Hierk and Angelo Eliades.

Seila shared his permaculture expertise with the group and helped us to plan and plant out our garden beds for Spring and Summer. As always, his advice regarding soil preparation, maximising growing space, planting seeds and seedlings and plant selection was invaluable to the community garden and perfect for applying in our own growing spaces, however small or large.

Angelo helped us to extend our knowledge about the varieties of berries and vines in the community garden and particularly how they work within the food forest ecosystem. Under his guidance the group was able to undertake some much needed maintenance of the plants and plan for future growth and fruiting.

Sunday, 1 September 2013

Join the Northcote Library Food Gardeners for community gardening workshops on Sunday 8th September. The workshops will take place during our usual monthly community gardening day and we invite you to join us for all or part of the day.

Sunday 8th September in the NLFG

10 - 11amWelcome, induction for visitors and new gardeners, gardening tasks for day set out

This is a hands-on workshop where Seila will take participants through his Spring planting guide, preparing garden beds for planting, companion planting, garden bed design for optimum yields and garden maintenance for Spring.

The NLFG features a wide variety of berry and vine plants and Angelo will show us how these plants contribute to a food forest design, which varieties to plant, as well as care and maintenance of plants for maximum fruit production.

Perennial Plants Workshop - August 2013The NLFG members and visitors enjoyed learning about the benefits and care of perennial plant varieties from Raf (formerly of Cultivating Community and Merristem nursery) on our August community gardening day.Raf's perennial plant guide can be found here

Sunday, 12 May 2013

The artwork below is by Conrad Clark, local artist and NLFG contributor. It depicts the garden in summer. Thank you for sharing your wonderful talents with us, Conrad, and finding some inspiration at the NLFG!

Thursday, 21 February 2013

The
following notes are a summary of the information presented by Seila Hierk at
the Planning for Autumn Food Gardening
Workshop held at the NLFG in early February. Planting guides for February and March appear at the end of this post.

Seila presents his overview of Autumn food gardening at the NLFG

Plan your
food gardening around the seasonal equinoxes.
The Autumn Equinox falls on March 21 and seedlings should be in the
ground to allow enough time (and sunshine) for a June harvest.

February Jobs

Garden
maintenance in February includes pruning, putting a handful of compost at base
of plants, creating compost and ‘renovating’ beds (compost, manure, ‘no dig’
strategies where needed).

Powdery
mildew is caused by humidity and lack of air flow and often strikes zucchinis
and pumpkins.It can be controlled with
a copper spray.

Mark
perennials such as artichoke, rhubarb, asparagus, sorrel and cannas before
growth disappears for winter.

On Composting, Manure and Mulch

Chicken vs. Cow – Chicken manure (high
in phosphates) should be used for fruit and root crops, whilst cow or sheep
manure (high in nitrogen) should be used where leafy crops are to be planted.

Harvest
leaves from parks/streets to create your own compost throughout Autumn.It is good to munch these up a bit (run a
mower over the top) for quicker composting.

Grow your own mulch/green manure: alfalfa (lucerne),
broadbeans, fenugreek, linseed, lupins, mustard,
oats and vetch,can be ‘chopped and dropped’ when just about to flower.

It is
cheaper to buy lucerne, straw etc. from pet suppliers rather than nurseries.

When adding
organic matter:for
established gardens add compost/manure of top of soil, but for poorly
performing gardens layer compost, lucerne, manure, dynamic lifter in layers
(using a no-dig strategy) or alternatively 'trenching' (as per the NLFG) whereby organic matter has been added to the soil by burying chopped up broad bean stems and
leaves and other garden material in trenches alongside growing areas.

Creating a 'hot compost' is also ideal at this time of year which can be done by massing at least a cubic metre of chopped up garden material and organic material in an area of the garden.

Crop Rotation

Seila
recommends using a ‘photo diary’ to manage your crop rotation.

Crops should
be rotated in the following order:

Leaf

Fruit

Root

Legume

eg.
silverbeet

kale

eg. tomatoes

capsicums

potatoes

eg.

carrots

swedes

parnips

eg.

climbing
beans

broad beans

peas

Pumpkins,
corn and zucchinis are heavy feeders and should be followed by legume crops.

Enriching
your soil with generous amounts of compost or manure at the end of each growing season can bypass
the need for crop rotation.

Growing Tips

You can
extend your growing season throughout Autumn for summer vegetables by covering plants with a mini
hot-house (sticks and clear plastic covering).
Individual plants can be ‘hot-housed’ by using two sticks and a plastic
bag.

Capsicums,
chillis and eggplants can remain the in the ground over winter. Cover them with a piece of shade cloth to
protect from frost over winter (plants can be transplanted into one area about
40cm apart). Plants can be uncovered in
Spring and you will start next summer with established plants and therefore
reap fruit much earlier!

It is ideal
to grow brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower etc.) where climbing beans
have grown.

Protect your
brassicas from cabbage moths by meshing them.

Seila uses a
short/medium/long term interplanting system

eg.

Long

Medium

Short

4 months

2-3 months

6 weeks

Potatoes

Broccoli

Lettuce

Due to the lower angle of the sun in Autumn/Winter, crops
needing increased sunlight, such as onions, can be planted on the outside of
garden beds with the short term crops that need to be accessible. Medium and long term crops can be planted in
the centre or towards the rear of beds.

S – Short term crops such as spinach, lettuce as well as root plants, onions and spring onions.

Contain
Jerusalem artichoke in a pot buried in garden beds or it will take over.

Seed Saving

Look out for plants that you will let go to seed or collect
the seed from. The strongest plants
should be saved for seed and the weakest eaten!
Save the seeds from at least five different plants for genetic diversity
(or swap some with a neighbour).

Garlic can be grown cheaply from Australian head of garlic
(not imported garlic that may have been treated so as to not sprout). Eat the small cloves and save the large ones
for planting out in March.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

This is a summary of information
presented during February’s Starting a
Worm Farm workshop at the NLFG.During
the workshop we set up a large wheelie bin worm farm, a domestic ‘Can of Worms’
farm and a budget polystyrene box farm.Worm farms can be created in almost any container, as long as it has a
source of drainage and a lid.

Getting Started

Worms can be sourced from the
wormfarms/compost bins of friends or purchased from your local nursery or
hardware supplier, although they are quite expensive to buy. There are several species of composting worm
that live in the mulch layer of gardens, towards the surface. They differ from the earthworm, which lives
lower in the soil, and composting worms and earthworms each perform a different
function in the garden eco-system. You
need about 1000 worms to get started with your worm farm (at least 4-5 good
handfuls of worms), although smaller numbers will work (it will just take
longer for your farm to operate most efficiently).

In worm farms with holes in the
bottom (domestic commercial farms, polystyrene boxes), you will need to cover the
holes with several layers of newspaper, some hessian or piece of flyscreen. This allows moisture to run through, but
stops your worms falling through the holes.

All worm farmers need to establish a ‘bed’
for their worms. The bed can be made
from straw/mulch/hay/coir (coconut husk) or newspaper. This material should be wet, but not
dripping. We added our worms to a bed of
coir and shredded newspaper with good quality compost and worm castings in a layer that was about 4-5
centimetres thick. You can also add
manure or clean garden soil to help make your worms happy in their new
home.

Cover the worms and ‘bed’ with a ‘doona’
of thick newspaper, thick hessian layer or old carpet. This layer needs to be moist but not dripping
and should stay moist at all times.

Worms need 1-2 weeks to settle into
their new home before you begin to feed them anything else.

Feeding your worms

After 1-2 weeks start by feeding your
worms about a cup of food scraps and see how long it takes the worms to eat
these. You can gradually increase the
amount of food that you feed your worms as the population increases and your
farm begins to operate more efficiently.

Worms will eat all fruit and vegetable
scraps and peelings except for citrus peelings and onion. Things like corn cobs, avocado skin, and large
seeds or pits are also unsuitable for the worm farm. They will also eat other food scraps
including bread, but do not put dairy or meat into the worm farm as these tend
to smell and attract vermin. Worms will
also eat eggshells, however my experience is that these can often be left in
the worm farm after other scraps have disappeared.

Worms particularly love coffee grinds
and will also eat things like teabags, hair and vacuum cleaner dust. I also like to add a bit of newspaper or
straw mulch to the mix occasionally.

Worms have no teeth and find it tough
going to munch on large food pieces. Farms
work most effectively when food scraps are cut into small pieces (about half a
thumb size).

The food scraps should not rot in the
worm farm. If they are rotting, rather
than being eaten, there is too much food being added to the farm.

Keeping it cool

The worm farm ‘doona’ of newspaper,
hessian, cardboard or old carpet needs to be kept moist at all times.

Worm will die if they are too hot and
farms should be stored in the shade.

Worm castings are beautiful, smooth, rich
dark brown worm ‘manure’ that are left in your worm farm as the worms munch through
your waste. They are nutrient-rich and spoonfuls
can be added to your potted plants, in potting mix as you pot up new plants or
sprinkled around the base of plants in the garden.

Worm juice will collect in the base
of your worm farm surprisingly quickly and needs to be collected regularly. Dilute worm juice at a ratio of 1:10 (the
colour of weak tea) and use as you would a liquid fertilizer. It will burn plants if not diluted.

To harvest worms in a domestic farm
(such as our Can of Worms), create a new worm bed in the spare tray and place
it on top of the layer full of castings.
The worms will migrate up to their new bed over a week or so, leaving
the bottom tray full of beautiful castings (and not many worms!).

In a box worm farm (or fridge or
bathtub farm), move the worms’ castings and bedding to one side of the farm and
add fresh bedding to the empty side.
Wait a week and most of the worms will move across to the fresh side,
leaving the castings and old bedding for you to collect.

Possible Problems

Your worm farm should not really
smell. If it smells, food is rotting in
your farm and you need to put in less food.

Small flies/insects can often infest
your farm. Sprinkling a good handful of
garden lime in your farm once every 1-2 months will make them go away. This can also be another indicator that you
are leaving too much food.

Your worms will leave if the
environment is too acidic. A handful of
garden lime will neutralise the environment.

The easiest way to kill your worms is
by letting the worm farm dry out (it needs to be moist at all times to keep
worms’ moist bodies happy) or cooking the worms in the farm on hot days.

Worms will also drown if you forget
to drain the liquid regularly, or they are exposed to the elements in a large
down pour.